Flicks - Hot-dogma

If you're a movie freak and the phrase Dogma 95 means nothing to you, then go swiftly to a video store and rent the products of what could be one of the saviors of film, an art form that these days needs a massive booster shot. The Dogma 95 film movement is the brainchild of Danish directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who, on a spring day in 1995 Copenhagen, penned a filmmaking "Vow of Chastity" as a laugh and a liberating gesture from the expensive technologies and tired formulas that plague many filmmakers.

Then, along with fellow Danes Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Christian Levring, they created Dogma 95, the strict yet liberating film movement whose works pulse with vitality, all while sticking to this "Vow of Chastity," which prohibits Dogma filmmakers from using film stock, artificial light, music scores, make-up, sets (all films are shot on location), props and costumes (to be owned by the actors themselves) and which demands that Dogma films be shot on digital video, with on-location sound and hand-held cameras. The idea is that, if a filmmaking team could concern itself less with complicated lighting and camera moves, then emphasis would naturally shift back to a film's really important elements — story and performance.

The first Dogma 95 movie was an undisputed stunner. The Celebration (Polygram VHS and Danish DVD), feeling like a distaff version of Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, tells the story of a well-to-do family, who, having just returned from the funeral of the patriarch's suicidal daughter, launch too soon into a 60th birthday party for Father (chillingly played by Henning Moritzen). As the celebration gets underway, the dead girl's twin brother (a tricky Ulrich Thomsen) lets loose with some shocks that leave the party's guests — and the viewer — questioning their sanity. No more will be revealed, for this is arguably the most suspenseful movie ever made that doesn't have bloody death threatening its characters at each turn. The reek of a gloomy supernatural presence, though, haunts the movie, which is given a distinctive, hazy look through the use of digital video noise. Immediate and alive, 1998's The Celebration has rightfully ascended as a crown jewel in the new Danish film scene.

After a seemingly interminable wait, this month sees the wide video release of two more Dogma 95 films. Lars Von Trier's The Idiots (Columbia, VHS and DVD) won't be widely seen on shelves until October, but the better stores in town already have it, thanks to a long-ago foreign video release. Von Trier, you may recall, is the genius who gave us Breaking the Waves (Miramax, VHS and a pristine new DVD release that must be seen by anyone unfamiliar with this masterpiece, a precursor to the Dogma 95 style) and The Kingdom, the Danish TV series about a haunted hospital.

With The Idiots, the writer/director provokes more valuable thought and discomfort with this tale of some jaded weekend free-thinkers who flout societal conventions by venturing out in the world "disguised" as a band of retarded adults. The group's newest addition, the mousy Karen (Bodil Jorgensen), stumbles shyly into the fray as its members are spasmodically busting up her lunch. Ultimately, she shows up the group's stern leader (Jens Albinus), who berates his colleagues for not having the guts to bring the idiot act home to their families and co-workers. Some might mistake The Idiots for comedy or criticism of society's envelope, but it's actually a damnation of the sort of stringent political thought that doesn't take into account people's emotions and desires.

Once The Idiots reaches its climaxes (including an unsettling orgy and a riveting finale that might make you queasy with tension), one's left thinking about the sometimes justified difficulty people have in following through on their toughest beliefs (reconsidering it now, though, I can imagine Von Trier maybe seeing his film as a spoof of Dogma 95 itself, with the four rebellious directors represented by this gang of troublemakers out to shake up the bourgeoisie).

The third Dogma film on video, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's Mifune (Columbia/Tri-Star, VHS and DVD), is so far the movement's most pastoral and accessible work. Anders Berthesen is a lawyer who chucks his partnership and his new bride for life in the country, where he tends to his dead father's dilapidated home and his child-like older brother Rud (Jesper Anholt). When he hires Liva (Iben Hjejle) to be Rud's caretaker, he quickly falls for her, not knowing piss-all about her past as a call girl.

Mifune is what it is, and nothing more — a cottony romantic comedy with a sharp eye centered in on dizzy characters who happen to be fine company. It's not what one would expect from these Danes, but with Dogma 95, why not expect the unexpected?

Dean Treadway is host of "Film Geek," a series of specials that can be seen occasionally on People TV (Channel 12 on Media One), and is co-host, along with Aron Siegel, of People TV's "Film Forum," Atlanta's only live movie review show, Tuesdays at 8 p.m.